A place to stand: Exploring connections between immigrant experience, whakapapa and creative writing – Dr Anne Bradley

Dr Anne Bradley is an award-winning teacher, writer and qualitative researcher with a 25-year career in vocational tertiary education in both the UK and Aotearoa New Zealand. She has published narrative research in the fields of education, human resource management and intercultural studies. Her belief in the transformative potential of narrative, and an interdisciplinary approach to research, shape and inform her practice.

Anne completed her PhD in 2025. Her thesis highlights how learning can be embedded in stories, a catalyst for creativity, connection and growth; how engaging with the concept of whakapapa as an overarching life matrix is transformative, and that creative writing itself can be a place to return to – a metaphorical tūrangawaewae, and a space where narrative connects us to ourselves, to others, to ancestors: a place to stand. Anne’s doctoral thesis comprises a critical (exegesis) and creative (fiction writing) component and contributes to the field of narrative theory. With an overarching research interest in ‘narrative and transformation’, Anne has a fascination with the idea that stories shape and inform us, as individuals, families, groups, organisations and societies and we in turn shape and inform others as we tell our stories in various ways. 

Anne is a Senior Academic staff member who teaches in the postgraduate team delivering the Master of Management (Business). 

Recent journal publications: 

Bradley, A. (2023). A Place to Stand: Exploring connections between immigrant experience, whakapapa and creative writing. [Doctoral thesis, Auckland University of Technology]. Tuwhera. 

Bradley, A., Hawkins, M., & Wilson, M. (2023). The impact of remote working on organisational culture in Aotearoa New Zealand. The New Zealand Journal of Human Resource Management, 23 (1), 20-35.